Mick Hucknall And My Dad

I am temping at the moment, with some very lovely people who laugh and tell me how friendly I am every time I ask for more work. I’ve been here a week now and, quite frankly, I haven’t done much at all. Today however I was asked to minute the team meeting, the agenda was sent to me first thing and quite clearly stated “open with prayer”. Mild panic set in case it was I that was expected to launch into a free style prayer where I’d accidentally say “and thanks Lord for letting me temp in an office that doesn’t give me any work and has access to Twitter“.

The reveal here is that, once upon a time I went to a church school and attended mass every sunday with my *Dad. I can actually rattle off the Hail Mary still if push came to shove. Of course as a teenager I started to rebel against the Sunday ritual and eventually found the defiance and stubborn streak I needed to say “No more church Dad! I want to tape the top 40 and eat sardines on toast”.

My Dad trotted off to mass alone. On return I could hear him telling my Mum that he just couldn’t belive who was in church and it tapped into my curiosity (bear in mind at the time I lived in a small fishing town in Devon and not the sprawling pit of opportunities and celebrities that London is). Mick Hucknall that’s who. Apparently his Nan lived in our town and he was taking a break from the hectic promotion schedule around Stars. He got up and sang a beautiful rendition of All Things Bright And Beautiful.

Except of course he didn’t. This was my Dad making up what I now look back on as a quite beautiful, simple lie. It has the wow factor as well as being plausible. It’s one of those lies that’s OK for a parent to tell their kids in order to teach them a life lesson. In this case “If you don’t want to come to church anymore you’ll miss pop stars singing hymns”. ♥

*My mum is an atheist and on the occasions that she has been inside a church she has refused to kneel/stand when cued and steadfastly stated that if there was a God she’d have been burned for swearing in his house by now. I don’t disagree with her.